PATRIOTS NOTEBOOK: Belichick says team played competitively against Washington

Friday

Aug 8, 2014 at 9:25 PMAug 8, 2014 at 9:38 PM

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick admits the team needs to play better than it did in Thursday night's preseason opener with the Redskins, however.

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

In what should come as no surprise, Bill Belichick doesn’t believe everything he reads.

Take the scoreboard at FedEx Field late Thursday night, for instance.

“I think we played competitively,” the Patriots head coach said Friday afternoon, reflecting on his team’s 23-6 loss to the Washington Redskins the previous night, “but we just didn’t overall play very well or play with the kind of awareness and concentration, execution that we need to.”

As for playing competitively, well, the Patriots trailed Thursday night’s preseason opener, 23-0, until second-round draft pick Jimmy Garoppolo found wide receiver Brian Tyms deep down the left sideline with a 26-yard scoring strike with only 1:23 to play.

The stat sheet told a similar tale – the Patriots were dominated in a game in which the Redskins totaled 26 first downs to their 15, amassed 387 total yards to their 270, and possessed the ball for 39:12 to their 20:48.

“I think there were plenty of times when we did things right and had decent results,” Belichick said during a conference call with the media. “We just didn’t do it often enough.

“Sometimes we did it on certain portions of the play, but not on other portions which may or may not have produced a good result. On even some of the plays where the results weren’t what we wanted them to be there were other aspects of the play that might have had positive things with them.”

Their joint practices and the game with the Redskins behind them, the Patriots have returned to Foxboro where they’ll face a similar schedule in the upcoming week.

The Patriots will host the Philadelphia Eagles in joint practices at 2 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, leading in to Friday night’s preseason home opener at Gillette Stadium (a 7:30 start).

“We have a little bit of time between now and Tuesday to catch up on some things and continue to work on things that we already have in our schemes,” said Belichick. “(We) just need to do them better, then start getting ready for the Eagle practices.”

High-tech review: Belichick said that the use of tablets on the sidelines played to mixed reviews.

While acknowledging the tablets provide an option that is “much more concise” than the old-school manner of producing pictures off a printer, Belichick said that Thursday night brought technical difficulties that were not unique to FedEx Field.

“The issues are those are wireless tablets down on the field so if the Wi-Fi isn’t connected or isn’t working or something happens then you have nothing. You’ve got zero,” said Belichick. “That happened in our game and it’s happened in other games from my understanding of talking with other people that have been involved there, too, because I wanted to try to get a little feedback on this subject.”

While saying “I think there’s some plusses to them,” Belichick added “I think there’s definitely some things that we need to get used to in terms of using a new product and the way it’s sort of organized.

“The consistency, or lack of, and dependability of it based on the connections or whatever the technical aspects of it are, which isn’t really my thing, makes it a little bit of an issue as to the useful dependability of it,” he said.